Facebook Getting Into The Chip Game?

It looks like Facebook is ramping up plans for a hardware platform based on the disclosure that it’s in the early stages of developing proprietary microprocessor chips. Facebook isn’t the first tech titan to start making chips – within the last five years Google and Apple both started manufacturing their own chips instead of our outsourcing to Intel or others, as a way to control their own device roadmap.

Of course Facebook isn’t planning on selling the microprocessors to consumers, but it’s still a critical foundational move for them. If you can imagine a day 5-10 years from now when Facebook has its own array of hardware, having those devices run on their own chips makes a ton of sense. So think of this as the setup move to enable a far bigger diversification strategy.

Seems like a pretty smart play for a publisher who needs to find other things besides ads and data to sell.